"As I ended he snatched a whip from one of the men, and raised it as though to strike me, but changing his mind, he half turned and slashed it across the naked shoulders of the negro.
"Before they could seize him, Antonio lurched forward, struck his master a stinging blow with his fist, and the next instant had scaled the garden wall and plunged into the cane-fields close by.
"Disgusted with the way in which my visit had ended, and scorning, under the circumstances, to make use of a conveyance belonging to the plantation, I left the grounds without seeing the señora and her daughters, and made my way to the plaza in the city. Later on I made my way to the wharf where I had ordered the bark's boat to meet me.
"Several times, as the men pulled easily toward the ship through the hot night, I thought I heard, between the intervals of the strokes, a sound like that of labored breathing and the noise of broken water just astern; but in the darkness that prevailed I could see nothing, and thinking perhaps that it was caused by the sharks which abounded in the harbor, I paid no further heed to it.
"We had run alongside the bark, and I had stood up in the stern-sheets to leave the boat, when a black hand reached out of the water and seized the gunwale of the boat; then as one of the sailors uttered a note of alarm and raised his oar threateningly, an agonized negro's face was lifted above the rail, and a pitiful voice cried in Spanish, 'Save Antonio, master!'
"I didn't like the idea of stealing another man's property, but I trembled to think of his fate should he be caught, so I took the poor fellow on board the Northern Light, and when morning came I lifted anchor and carried him away from cruelty and slavery forever. To cut him adrift from the past I rechristened him 'Sam.'"